Chapter 15
XV.
They passed me from one set of hands to another, each new set taking the rope-lead with a little less zeal and a wealth of apprehension.
No one wanted to be near a creature who had, as the entire palace had now heard, maimed and nearly killed several of the armed guards who patrolled the park, even if I had gone docile on the leash.
Could anyone figure out that I was intelligent and had thus deduced the futility of fighting when injured and bound in such a way?
No one put it together. And while the tsarina knew, she would not say.
She could not say, not if she wanted all to think that she possessed a firebird and that her former jester was truly dead.
And, even more personal to her, did she want everyone aware of the power she wielded via The Kind and Fair?
Many had said that the tsarina was a sorceress, although mostly as a descriptor of her unchecked power, but no one had seen the truth of it, or had witnessed enough to give others proof.
Unless they too were like me, put in an impossible situation where disclosure would ruin any hope of their freedom.
The menagerie was a broad term to describe many of the enclosures, exhibits, pavilions, and aviaries where the Great One, successors, and other palace residents stored and maintained creatures from foreign dignitaries, personal hunting expeditions, and courtier gifts.
The only thing it told me was that I would be put somewhere outside of the palace and with greater precautions so that I would not be able to flee again.
My guard settled on a pavilion out in the park, not far from the palace.
Secluded and shielded by a line of trees, I would be completely alone.
Peacocks might once have occupied it, which might have been why they brought another massive bird to it.
With no gates or cages — doubtless because the peacocks had been allowed to roam freely — it only possessed a half-roof to keep out the elements and old straw laid out on the ground.
A private bench occupied the wall across from the shelter in the event anyone should want to observe the tsarina’s bird.
My attendants led me to the stone wall that circled the shelter.
My last remaining guard from the transfer held the lead while one of the last attendants to receive me bound my ankles, a small length of rope between them so that I could still move, but not enough to let me run off with ease.
They secured that rope to a metal ring in the wall, much like jesses in falconry.
Then they backed away to see if they had neglected anything, the guard eager to drop my lead after prolonged exposure.
Another came to join the two assigned to my relocation.
This one, a stout man likely not much older than I, came armed with a bolt of fabric and a leather bag.
He set his burdens down at the edge of the shelter and observed for a long moment, a mix of awe and wariness.
After an awkward period of watching me, he held his hand out in front of him to see if I would fight.
When I simply stepped backward, he scooped up his leather bag and fabric and pressed his advance.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he coaxed. “I need to look at that wing of yours.”
If I continued to back away, my companions would assume I would lash out as any cornered wild creature and try to pin me. If I moved forward at the reassurance of aid, then my companions might guess that I could understand them. So I didn’t move.
“Can’t have our firebird wounded now, can we? Not after all the time it took for the tsarina to finally get you. You’re doing so good,” he assured me as he reached to unbind my wings.
I twitched them away.
He glanced over his shoulder and eyed the guard and attendant to see if either of them might be useful in holding me should I struggle. The disappointment in his face as he turned back to address me again almost made me smile. An impulse I quickly had to squash lest I give myself away.
Except I had a beak now. Could I smile at all? Probably in no way that would translate to a person not expecting such a thing from such a creature.
The man set down the leather bag and fabric. He rolled up his sleeves, even in the chill, in preparation for a difficult time.
“Gentle,” he cooed at me. “I’m here to help.”
With only a little difficulty, less because I gave it to him intentionally and more because he exercised excessive caution, he finally snagged the bindings.
I didn’t want to fight aid, even if I wanted to make myself everyone’s problem for the rest of my natural existence, so I held still. The man found the place in my wing and probed at it. I yelped, and he caught me by the shoulder.
“Hold there,” he said, releasing me. “I’ll be but a moment.”
Not having wings in my natural shape, I did not know how they correlated to my old anatomy.
Were the wings part of my shoulder blades or my ribs or my spine, or a combination?
And now that I had a bullet hole in one of them, I could not determine where the wound might have been on a human body.
If by some miracle I escaped this fate, would I have a scar on my back from this?
He grabbed the fabric with his free hand and began wrapping my wing, undoing the bindings as he replaced them with the softer material.
“I don’t have an Aba large enough for you,” he told me as he worked. “We might have to have one made so you don’t hurt yourself. Just be still now.”
As he passed the fabric under a wing, he paused. Then he turned his attention to the two useless people at the enclosure entrance.
“It has arms,” he said to them.
“I know,” answered the guard. “We bound them too. The thing is unnatural.”
“I suppose firebirds, and other Otherland creatures, are, by definition, unnatural. Or perhaps supernatural.”
The man gave me another long examination and passed the back of his hand over his brow. Then he resumed binding my wings until only a small patch around the wound remained visible. With the main task done, the man dug around in his bag and extracted a tool that I did not want anywhere near me.
“I didn’t see a bullet,” he said to me, as if I could understand, which I did, but he didn’t know that. “But I need to clean it. You’re doing so well.”
Despite my apprehension, I set myself to endure. I almost vomited from the pain, but he was deft with his tool and eventually produced a squashed round to show me.
“I’m glad I looked.” He spun it in his fingers. “I don’t know how this will affect your flight —”
I couldn’t fly. I had already tried it. But I appreciated his concern.
“—but we can only do our best, right?”
He might have had a fainting spell if I answered him, so I just looked away.
He tossed the spent bullet into his bag with the tool and retrieved ointment of which he slathered obscene amounts on my wound.
“We can’t have our firebird getting an infection now,” he soothed as he bandaged up the tender area.
“Are you sure it’s a firebird?” the attendant asked.
“I thought the firebird was supposed to be red and gold,” the guard said. “This one is just black. I don’t know that a few bright feathers count as a firebird.”
“Those are all legends,” the man said. “Tell me, have you ever seen another such creature? I certainly haven’t, and I see them all!”
If this man attended all of tsarina’s creatures, then I supposed I could safely assume that she was not hiding hordes of other enchanted princes somewhere on palace grounds. Somehow, knowing I was the only one did not flatter me.
“Maybe, somewhere, there’s still a firebird that looks like the creatures of yore,” he continued as he tied off the fabric.
“Maybe deep in the Otherlands. I cannot imagine that Otherland creatures that live in the Mundane Lands look much like their legendary counterparts, if only for survival. How else might this one have eluded us for so long?”
“I suppose that’s true,” observed the guard.
“Maybe,” said the attendant with more skepticism.
“If the tsarina calls it a firebird,” said the man rolling his sleeves down to denote the completion of his work, “I will too. And unless one comes along that looks more like what we expect, there will be nothing to sway my opinion.” He paused. “Unless the tsarina decides to change her mind.”
He was a survivalist too then, having the sense not to contradict the tsarina. That was likely why he had charge of her strange pets.
After closing his bag, he took another long look at me. He swept his hand up my shoulder, causing strange discomfort by brushing the feathers in the wrong direction. I side-stepped him, pulling my shoulder away.
“You have a good bloom to your coat. I don’t think your beak needs any coping, but I would like to look.”
He reached over and caught the beak, forcing me to face him. I didn’t fight because I wanted this to be over. He opened the beak and then paused. He did not let me go, but he met my eyes meaningfully.
“You are not built like a bird,” he said.
“What was that?” the guard shouted.
“It has teeth,” the man shouted so that they could hear them. Then he returned his attention to me. “Human teeth,” he said for my benefit alone. He resumed his examination. When he finally released me, he lowered his voice. “Do you speak?”
I didn’t know the mechanics of my nose and mouth becoming a beak.
I had not touched it or examined it because then it truly would be part of me.
The tsarina had told me I was still a man but in a costume I could not remove, and in that, I had been content to take her at her word.
So long as I could still function and eat and communicate, I did not need to examine how any of it was accomplished.
I just hadn’t realized that my anatomy, or inconsistent anatomy, might give me away.
In answer, I just stared blankly at him. He doubted me, but he took a step back.